Best of Stash 2015: CALL OF DUTY BLACK OPS III: “EMBERS”

Director Patrick Clair and the Elastic crew team with agency 72andSunny to compile a convincing news montage stretching 50 years into the future creating an unnerving back story for Activision’s Call of Duty franchise in prep for the release of “Black Ops III” in the fall of 2015.

Jennifer Sofio Hall, executive producer at Elastic in Santa Monica, CA: “I’m fascinated by body hacking and the potential of future technology to change who we are, but it’s also been a common area for exploration over the past decades of science fiction. The challenge was: How do we make this fresh and interesting?

“The 72 team had the perfect idea to tie this to sports – it feels far removed from the military initially, but of course, advancements in fields like sports invariably inform the way we train and equip our warfighters.

“The challenge for Elastic executionally was how do we bring this sports metaphor to life, while tonally serving the dark and violent future that we’re leading the audience towards.

“We knew the spot primarily had to hinge on stock footage and documentary sources. We had the time and budget to shoot a few scenes, but not more than that. We were intent on creating something that felt holistic, that had a unique aesthetic that established the world.

“We combed through stock footage databases, with carefully developed aesthetic guidelines, looking for footage that could come together in a cinematic way. We then augmented some of this footage with futuristic vehicles and structures, creating a believable vision of how the world might evolve (and the environment decay) over the next 50 years.

“The main challenge of the project stemmed from a very short production timeline. We completed the work in March/April of this year – with a very short turnaround from the initial brief, to the shoot, to delivery.

“We started working on the CGI sequences and VFX assets the first day of the schedule – in many cases, long before we’d shot the material they’d be combined with.

“David Brodie, our awesome editor, was cutting from day one – which helped us treat the shoot as a surgical strike. We already knew what we needed, and we chased that – shooting all the scenes in a single long day and into the night.”